Kerala has retained the top spot in Niti Aayog’s Sustainable Development Goals Index for the year 2020-’21, a report released by the government’s think-tank on Thursday showed. Bihar was the worst performer among all the states.

The report assesses the progress of states and Union Territories on several parameters, including social, economic, and environmental.

For this year’s report, the states were evaluated on 16 Sustainable Development Goals on a scale of zero to 100. Kerala came out on top with a score of 75, while Himachal Pradesh and Tamil Nadu came second, scoring 74 each. Andhra Pradesh was placed next in the list with 72 points. On the other hand, Bihar, Jharkhand and Assam were the worst-performing states this year with 52, 56, and 57 points, the report showed.

Mizoram, Haryana and Uttarakhand were the three fastest-moving states, in terms of improvement of their respective scores since the last report.

Source: Niti Aayog

India’s overall score across sustainable development goals improved marginally by six points, from 60 in 2019-’20 to 66 in 2020-’21, the Niti Aayog said.

Source: Niti Aayog

The report added that 22 states and Union Territories were in the “front runner” category (states with overall scores of 65 to 99). This is an improvement since the 2019-’20 report, in which 10 states were in the category.

“Our effort of monitoring SDGs through the SDG India Index and dashboard continues to be widely noticed and applauded around the world,” Niti Aayog Vice Chairperson Rajiv Kumar said while releasing the report. “It remains a rare data-driven initiative to rank our states and union territories by computing a composite index on the SDGs.”